Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)

Emőke Bodonyi: Czóbel's water colours and graphic works

198. Béla Czóbel: Caricature on Lajos Kassák, 1940S. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum

197. Béla Czóbel and Lajos Kassák in the i960s. Private collection

rendering. His streetviews were organized into a fine linear system, and the vigorous lines were ordered by a few stronger gestures.

The base left white, turning to an element of composing with the colour patches and charcoal lines covering it, is a relatively late picture type.61 In his last drawings almost the abstractions of objects appeared, characterized by a few distinct lines.

The harmony in which he lived with his surroundings and its expression in the drawings is best described by Lajos Kassák: “In most of the time he used a dense layer of lines, but the graphics enriched with colour patches let a deeper insight to his lyric world, his instinctive manner of working. No speculation, no resoluteness [...], the lines, colours and forms always respecting the pictorial rules revive from the feelings and ideas of a lonely man.”62

61 Béla Czóbel, catalogue. R. Stanley Johnson’s writing. Chicago: R. S. Johnson Fine Art, 2012. With excellent illustrations in chronological order.

62 Kassák (op. cit. in note 15), p 13.

CZÓBEL’S WATER COLOURS AND GRAPHIC WORKS

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